NATIVE RELIGION. 17 



The people of central Africa have religious ideas 

 stronger than those of the Caffres and other southern 

 nations, who talk much of God but pray seldom. They 

 pray to departed relatives, by whom they imagine ill- 

 nesses are sent to punish them for any neglect on their 

 part. Evidences of the Portuguese Jesuit missionary 

 operations are still extant, and are carefully preserved by 

 the natives: one tribe can all read and write, which 

 is ascribable to the teaching of the Jesuits: their only 

 books are, however, histories of saints, and miracles 

 effected by the parings of saintly toe-nails, and such- 

 like nonsense: but, surely, if such an impression has 

 once been produced, it might be hoped that the efforts 

 of Protestant missionaries, who would leave the Bible 

 with these poor people, would not be less abiding. 



In a commercial point of view communication with 

 this country is desirable. Angola is wonderfully fertile, 



pronounce those who keep their teeth to "look like zebras." Surely 

 this is some vestige of the animal worship of Egypt. The members of 

 the Babimpe tribe pull out both their upper and lower front teeth, as a 

 distinction. Sheakonda's people, and those on the Tambra, file their 

 teeth to a point ; as also do the Chiboque, a hostile tribe on the borders 

 of Angola. This, too, is the practice of the Bashinge ; these people 

 flatten their noses by inserting bits of reed, or stick, into the septum. 

 The Balonda gentlemen so load their legs with copper rings, that they 

 are obliged to walk in a straggling way, the weight being a serious hin- 

 drance to walking. A man seeing our traveller smile at another with 

 no rings, imitating his betters as though he wore them, said, "That is 

 the way in which they shew off their lordship in these parts." It is the 

 ladies on the Loajima who wear the hoop round the head. The women 

 on the Zambesi and among the Maravi pierce the upper lip, and gra- 

 dually enlarge the orifice until they can insert a shell. The lip is thus 

 drawn out beyond the perpendicular of the nose. Sekwebu said of them, 

 " These women want to make their mouths like those of ducks." 



